In the third installment of George A. Romero’s living-dead saga, the zombies have firmly taken control of the world. Holed up in an underground bunker in Florida, a group of scientists and military men search for a solution to the undead outbreak. But the testing of zombie specimens by Logan (Richard Liberty) causes friction with Rhodes (Joe Pilato, in a tour de force performance), and some of the group, including Sarah (Lori Cardille), begin to think it might be safer outside with the flesh-eaters. Featuring state-of-the-art special effects by Tom Savini and an Academy Award-caliber performance by Howard Sherman as Bub (the zombie with a soul), Romero’s film viciously pulls the guts out of Reagan-era America to show the bloody mess it’s become.

There hadn’t been a lot of anthology movies when the George Romero/Stephen King collaboration CREEPSHOW, a film inspired by classic EC horror comics, debuted in 1982; in comparison to the sober, big-budget thrills of POLTERGEIST and THE THING, the Romero/King effort was a refreshing blast of B-movie fun, low on budget and ambition but with a surprisingly good cast: Hal Holbrook, E.G. Marshall, Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Ed Harris, Fritz Weaver and King himself. "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill," the segment with King (as an incredibly stupid farmer), is probably the most memorable even though it’s a short vignette compared with the others - it’s a deft takeoff of THE BLOB and a riff on those moronic victims in ’50s sci-fi movies who always want to be first in line to check out that strange light coming from over the next rise.

This tale of a young man who may or may not be a 100-year-old vampire, seeking redemption for his bloodlust, is both sympathetic and horrific thanks to John Amplas’ performance as the title character. Is he really a vampire or a mentally disturbed killer?